Dialogue with "Holly," a Christian fundamentalist: On the death of "baby Eli," and a "Died in the Womb" Resurrection Tale.

 

Bruce Monson

 

Holly's Letter

My Response

2nd Exchange

 

 

Holly's Initial Letter

 

Sent: Sunday, February 23, 2003 12:06 AM

Subject: I know some one special

 

I know of a young boy he is 8 years old right now, I would have to make sure on this.

 

When he was in his mothers womb at 5 months they did an ultra sound. The baby had died and the placenta had begun to remove it's self.   The doctor began to talk about abortion procedures to remove the dead baby.

 

The father "with respect" said, Sir I know what you see, I know what we're are supposed to do by procedures. But Sir, I have heard in prayers about this child and that he would live and be _______________, such an such a man.  I am asking you to give us three days and when we come back in our baby will be alive and well.

 

They left, they called every Christian and every Church and family member to fast and pray for three days for their son.

 

And they did, and they wept, and they yelled out to him, they whispered, they joined together.  

He returned with his wife. He said " Let Gods decision be made know now"  The ultrasound showed a healthy placenta reattached to the uterine wall, a healthy heart and very moving baby who was delivered on time at his due date time.  He belongs to my neighbors family.

 

My personal story,  Last night February 21 2003, we received a call from one of our expectant parents from the Aurora Hospital in Kenosha Wisconsin.  They came in to get  a strange discharge checked. they couldn't find a heart beat for the baby.  They brought the ultra sound in and after two had to tell the parents that the baby had strangled on the cord and was dead.  Dad began calling around and us to pray, there were so many thing special about this baby boy, so many things we knew before they we announced by doctors.  Everyone prayed for him to live again and come out crying.

I went to the side of this wonderful mother, she relented "the news is tragic but I have a God who can do anything" We all agreed, She stayed in good emotional control through out the rest of the night and early next morning, that would be today for me right now. I stayed with her for almost every single contraction. The Dr. insisted she go through this in as natural as possible. Why we are not sure.  I was one of the hardest labors I have seen. I have 5 children myself, each birth different. When pain was at it's worst, she would cry out to Jesus, sing in many tunes Halleluiah.  She is beautiful. through out the churches and in the homes of friends and family there were many on their knees and fasting, praying, crying asking all for the same thing, life, strength, a miracle.

 

Baby Eli died on February 21st 2003 but was born today February 22nd, and he did not cry out, he remained an empty shell. every nurse every bit of the family, friends and church are now morning and crying. We did not regain our lost prize, our wonderful, beautiful Eli. 9 pounds that guy was. Does that mean my/our God is not there or listening? I wish I could say yes, I am so grieved so unbelievably racked with pain and sobbing will not stop. I want some one to blame, I want to make him open his eyes. Life is unfair in so many other ways it doesn't have to be this way too. But I can't say God is wrong, I have heard Him before. He has reveled Himself everyday since I let Him use my life to show love to others. I am sorry you too have such great hurt. I know now what it is like to hold a baby who is not alive. It is the most horrible experience there is in this life. To hold your own baby dead in your arms.......... But if I didn't know God I wouldn't have a peace that surpasses all understanding, as I have now. I would be lost right now. there would be no joy in my future.  There would be no purpose for my life if there wasn't a greater goodness in life.  I had hoped to find online other stories of resurrection to help deal, but I found this site first and a story of one person like me with the same results in their life. I have a different ending in my heart though. I also know of an actual miracle child, so I figured I would share that.  Please if your going to reply do so with respect. I am in mourning and after reading other titles and essays I see your site is rather hostile towards others who still believe. I want my trial to help you through yours, that is all.  Thank you.

 

Holly (last name witheld-bam)

 

 

My Response (Topic Headers Added)

 

Holly,

 

Thank you for your email.

 

 

"You're Hostile Toward Believers!"

 

I think we need to clarify something up front:  In your email you expressed concern that I am "hostile towards others who still believe", but this is something that you could not be more mistaken about!  To the contrary, Holly, the vast majority of my closest friends are "believers," to include a Catholic priest who is one of my best friends.  I have many friends who are believers in religions and philosophies other than Christianity too, such as Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and even a couple Wiccans.  I also have many friends that are atheists and agnostics--some of the nicest and most respectful people I have ever known.  The point is, I do not begrudge anyone their right to believe what ever they wish, if that gives them happiness and comfort. 

 

What I do challenge is the idea and practice of proselytizing as a means to conversion by persons proclaiming their own religion to be "the one true one" (to the exclusion of all others).  That these tend to be mostly Christians only speaks to the fact that Christianity is abundantly represented in the U.S. and, like Islam, is a heavy proselytizing religion, so there is no shortage of Christians proselytizing to me and others in the public setting.  But if I were in a room with you (a Christian) and a Muslim who was professing the "one and only truth" of Islam to you, and telling you how you must submit to his truth or else "suffer the 'eternal' consequences" in the Muslim hell, I would be all over him/her for their display of such intolerance and psychological terrorism!  I would be defending you for your right to believe as you will, even though I am no longer a Christian. 

 

I encourage you to read further, Holly, because I think you will ultimately see that my position is repeated multiple times throughout my website in my essays, debates, and other writings. 

 

And now on to your email.

 

 

Where is the "God of compassion" in This World of Death and Famine?

 

First, let me say something that, as a firefighter-paramedic who has personally shared (and suffered through) the tragic moments of child deaths with so many grieving mothers and families over the years, I am sorry for your loss!  No one should have to suffer through the death of a child, least of all one of their own, or their relation.  This is something that is obviously causing you much grief.  Sadly, such deaths occur all too frequently in our society, even with the benefits of ready access to the best hospitals, the best doctors, and the best medications and vaccines.

 

But you have lots of company, Holly! The fact is, 30 thousand children die EVERY DAY in the world for such senseless and treatable reasons as starvation, diarrhea, malaria, respiratory infections, cholera, measles, influenza, among many others that we in the U.S. don't even think about as "deadly" anymore--our kid gets sick and we go to the doctor's office, get a shot, and tomorrow it's back to soccer practice.  But most of the world lives in far less certainty and in many countries like the Sudan and Somalia the mortality rate for newborns is upwards of 50 percent and 70 percent die by age 5!  More than a billion people on this planet live at the sub-poverty level, surviving on the U.S. equivalent of less than one-dollar a day.  

 

I ask you, Holly: Where is the great god of compassion for these children?  Where is that god that supposedly sent "manna from heaven" to feed his starving "chosen people" as they wandered in the Sinai, and fed thousands of his hungry children in Palestine with only two fishes and five loaves of bread?  Where is this god who supposedly raised Lazarus from the dead (after four days in the tomb) in order that those seeing this miracle would see it and "believe" as a result of having seen?  Where is this god that supposedly was so moved to action at seeing the grief of one "widowed mother" whose "only son had died" that he resurrected her dead son back to life and returned him to her arms?  Where is this god that can do all this for "his children," and yet somehow cannot provide even sufficient rainfall in some parts of the world to support crop production and clean water to drink, even while people die by the thousands in other parts of the world because there is too much rain?  Does "He" allow children to starve to death simply because they happen to be of a different religion than Christianity or Islam or another?  Does a Muslim mother in Afghanistan or Serbia or Iraq feel any less pain than a Christian mother when she holds her dead child in her arms--dead through starvation, or disease, or "collateral damage" from a million-dollar American bomb?  Was it her lack of faith in Jesus that suffered her the devastation of seeing her child slowly die of starvation?  Would Jesus have "saved" her child if she would have only prayed to "Him" rather than Allah?  And conversely, would baby Eli have lived if yours and other Christians' prayers had been directed at Allah, or Vishnu, or Asclepius, or some other god rather than Jesus? 

 

That's a stinging accusation for anyone to make, to be sure, and I know that the very idea of this is something you would likely find offensive and hurtful.  But hurt is certainly not my intent.  You must know that I don't see things that way, and I would never suggest that that is the case; rather, I provide it as an example of how intolerant such a position is, irregardless of who is making such a claim.  But those professing their own religion as "truth" to the exclusion of others would see it this way, and unfortunately, many of these people do not give a second thought about proclaiming such to others--and inflicting harm in the process!  Religion is a personal matter, and it should remain so--THAT is what I'm talking about! 

 

 

Human Experience and Suffering

 

I see things from a reference point of human experience, and I know and recognize suffering in the harsh realities of the real world.  As a firefighter-paramedic I, by choice, try to lessen that suffering and to make a real tangible difference in the lives of real people in the real world, right now.  I can empathize with your plight, Holly, because I have experienced it first hand, over and over.  Even before I was a firefighter, when I was just a naive teenager, I went through a very trying process of anger and questions in my own faith over the whys and higher goods that my loving god, Jesus, supposedly had in mind by taking the life of my best friend in a tragic chainsaw accident.  And then one day I saw the light, and this debilitating weight was suddenly lifted.  You can read about this and other things in respect to my religious history on my website.  In short, it was when I finally let go of the idea of "God's higher plan" for such things that I found solace and acceptance of death.  Much to my surprise, it was not my religion that gave me comfort and closure, but the realization that there was no divine plan, and therefore, no "message" to be pondered over, no supreme being to question or be mad at, and more importantly, no actions (or non-actions) by said "God" to rationalize and justify in the context of an all-knowing, all-powerful and all-loving god.

 

So while you said that your sharing of your "trial" with me was meant to "help [me] through [mine]", I must respond with a counter-perspective on that point; namely that (1) I have long since come to recon with the realities of death, and do not need to be "help[ed] through it."; and (2) I feel that it is you who are questioning and searching for answers, which is why you were doing "miracle" searches on the Internet to begin with--you are going through a traumatic time in your life as the result of baby Eli's death.  I think you are looking for that "higher good" that your god must surely have had for taking baby Eli away.   I think you're waiting for that proverbial "other shoe" to drop.  Again, see  my religious history  for more on this. 

 

 

A "Died in the Womb" Resurrection Miracle?

 

Now, as for the died in the womb testimonial about the 8-year-old son of your neighbor, there are many aspects of the story that sound all too typical of Christian testimonial tales that have been either wholly or in part doctored-up and mythologized over time.  I remember these sort of stories being very popular in my church growing up, but usually the facts are far different than the evangelizing propaganda that gets built up around them. 

 

This is not to say that such events were entirely fabricated.  No, many testimonials do center around actual events (though many more do not), but the problem is that ignorance frequently overtakes the better part of reason, and before you know it the "doctor" has been made to say and mean things that s/he never said or meant, and the circumstances are expounded upon and repeated until they become something completely different to what actually happened.  There are a few things in your story that lead me to suspect that is the case here:

 

 

Thus, Holly, given the limited amount of information you provided, I find it MORE LIKELY that the child was not in fact dead, but rather was in serious danger of becoming dead (perhaps the fetus was bradycardic, but not asystolic), because of an acute occurrence of abruptio placenta--the resulting pain of which (usually a "tearing" sensation) was probably what motivated this family to go to the hospital to begin with.  Abruptio placenta, while certainly life-threatening, does not necessarily result in fetal death, and depending on the degree of placental separation, there are treatments that can help the placenta reattach itself and the pregnancy continue to term. 

 

And there is another possibility that often goes overlooked in these iffy medical miracle cases: and that is human error!  Why is it that Christians will focus on and even celebrate our human weaknesses and our inevitable mistakes every other time, but whenever they utilize "doctors" as an authority figure to bolster their testimonials about "miracles from God after doctor says there is no hope", they will suddenly negate the possibility that the doctor may have simply made a mistake in his diagnosis?  Doctors make mistakes aplenty, to include little things like amputating the wrong leg, or prescribing the wrong medication, or doing a heart-lung transplant on a 17 year old girl, only to discover that they had not verified the proper blood type on the organs before performing the procedure, ultimately resulting in this girl's death!  And it wasn't just one doctor involved in this incident, but multiple! 

 

Interestingly enough, Christians (and followers of other religions alike) will gladly give Jesus credit for all the "good" that doctors, nurses, paramedics and firefighters do in helping people, by saying that "Jesus was performing His glorious works through them," but whenever these people screw up and the result is a negative outcome, then, well, the "Jesus did it" crowd disperses to the four winds since such an outcome certainly was not the result of Jesus working through them!  Why the double-standard?

 

I would encourage you to read over my conversation with a fundamentalist lady from South Africa by the name of Amanda Jones who also had a resurrection tale to share with me.  She also had some rather troubling ideas about why her friend's 2-year-old boy drowned in a baby pool while her back was turned as she talked on the phone.  And see especially my 5-part discourse on "miracles" presented there in which I explain what would constitute a "miracle" in terms of the New Testament, and what I mean when I say "I need to see" in order for me to believe, again.

 

Thanks again for your email, Holly. 

 

I hope that you see my response as an effort at informing and not as a personal attack against you or your chosen beliefs.  We are all human beings who share the same pains, and we have to live together no matter what our beliefs may be.  And on this I am reminded of a quote from Mahatma Gandhi on the duty of tolerance.  He said, "If you cannot feel that the other faith is as true as yours, you should feel at least that the men are as true as you." (Young India, 1927)

 

Take Care.

 

Regards,

 

Bruce Monson

www.freethoughtfirefighters.org

Adherence to Life BEFORE Death

 

2nd Exchange: Dialogue Format (Topic Headers Added)

 

 

Dear Holly,

 

Sigh...

 

I can see that you not only missed the point, but you simply have no interest in critical inquiry when your cherished beliefs are on the line.  I understand though, Holly, because I used to be the same way.  I spent seventeen years as a devout Christian--a fundamentalist just as you are.  And like you, I used to think that those who denied "my Jesus" were just ignorant doofs who were "angry at God" and shaking their fists at the sky in defiance.  I didn't realize then--as I do now--that it wasn't THEM who were gatherers of hate and intolerance, but me, in my self-righteous belief that I possessed something that nonbelievers were lacking (i.e., salvation), and because they were lacking I needed to show them the "error of their ways." 

If you wish to debate the miracle issue (or any other issue), then I'm game.  But I will NOT allow you to simply postulate unsupported conjecture and wishful thinking as though it were some incontrovertible fact that must be accepted up front.  If you think you can provide evidence that miracles not only exist, but that said miracles would necessarily HAVE to be the work of YOUR PROFESSED GOD (as opposed to, say, Krishna, or Allah, or Vishnu, or Quetzalcoatl, or any number among thousands of other gods that have been and continue to be worshiped by billions of people past and present), then by all means present it! 
 

 

If You Don't Believe 'My Way' then you are "Hostile" and "Anti-God"
 

HOLLY:

Bruce as much as you say your open and not hostile you were very much so in your email.

 

BRUCE:

I'm not hostile, Holly.  Like most fundamentalists, it is your deep sensitivity to any perceived "threat" to your cherished beliefs that causes you to feel like you have been personally attacked, when in fact it is not you, but a rigid and intolerant ideology that is being countered here.  I doubt that you would feel I am being "hostile" if the subject were Islam, or Buddhism, or Arthurian legends, or Greek mythology, right?  I could cite dozens of examples of "miracles" performed by other god-man figures who supposedly lived for hundreds, even thousands of years before Jesus is said to have lived--"saviors" who supposedly performed resurrections from the dead, multiplied food to feed thousands, cured the sick, exorcised demons, calmed the seas, etc., etc., ad nauseam.  And because I challenged the reality of these ancient nonChristian tales, you would have no problem whatsoever accepting my evidence to that effect--indeed, you would be eager to accept it, since it is a necessary condition to support your cause of Christian priority!  But when I argue the exact same point in terms of the Christian mythology, you will scream like a mashed cat, crying "persecution" and "you must really be angry at God to say such 'hateful' things!" 

 

So any "hostil[ity]" being generated or perceived here, Holly, is the result of your assigning an emotional value--an attachment--to your religious views that you do not equally apply to others.

 

 

You are Close-minded to Miracles

 

HOLLY:

You quoted so many miracles and signs in your  email. And then refused there to be any chance that any more miracles could happen. 

 

BRUCE:

I quoted no such thing!  What I quoted was Christian propaganda from the Christian Bible--that is NOT evidence any more than quoting miraculous events and divine intervention in the matters of men from Zeus and the pantheon of Greek gods, as told in Homer's Iliad & Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, and many others, are supportive evidence to warrant belief in such things to be historical fact!  We do know that for the ancient Greeks, the Homeric epics were considered true accounts written under divine inspiration, but no reasonable person today believes them to be true. 

 

There is not a shred of evidence, in fact, to support any of those dramatic tales we read about in the canonical gospels--none!   Just because you place the Christian Bible on an altar and call it the "Word of God" does not make it so, Holly, no matter how much you wish it to be so.  Every so-called "miracle" that was allegedly performed by Jesus in the gospels (and even the canonical gospels are widely conflicting on these and other issues), was but a plagiarized version of the same "miracles" alleged to have been performed by other "savior" figures that were worshiped from popular religions of the day--stories that had been extant for hundreds, even thousands of years before Christianity came on the scene.

 

And then there are those dozens of "other" gospels, epistles and apocalypses (more than 50 of them, in fact) that have at one time or another been considered "canonical" literature for various Christian sects, but are selectively ignored by evangelicals because they do not like the way Jesus is portrayed in them.

 

HOLLY:

Yet in the book it's self there is ways to keep your self clean, your inviroment some very practical and useful ways to live that would wipe out most diseases and dysntiria.  The Manan represents Jesus and that everyday you need a fresh intake of his word.

 

 

BRUCE:

I normally try to focus attention directly at the issues, and not on one's ability (or lack thereof) to apply proper grammar and produce coherent thoughts in their writing, but looking at the above statements (and really most of your two emails) I simply have no choice but to say something in this regard.  You really need to slow down and read what you write before sending it off, because whether you think so or not, your writing skills are atrocious!  The reader should not have to tread through poor grammar and spelling errors in order to decipher what you are trying to say. 

 

 

More, You are "Anti-God"

 

HOLLY:

You are very anti -God.

 

BRUCE:

Yeah, right!  That's like saying I am "anti-Leprechauns" or "anti-Zeus" or "anti-Peter Pan" or "anti-Rumpelstiltskin" or . . .

 

Do you see the problem, Holly?  It is meaningless to tell an atheist that s/he is "anti-God" since, for them, no such being exists to be angry at or "anti" about!  Are you angry at Zeus?  Are you anti-Mithra?  Do you look at the world's problems and question "Why" Vishnu allows so much suffering in the world?  Do you blame Allah for allowing baby Eli to die?  You see, Holly, you are an "atheist" to every other god professed in the world--and there are three times as many nonChristians in the world as there are Christians (and ironically, there are more than 20,000 separate sects of Christianity, with many of these threatening hellfire to each other!).    I simply disbelieve in one more god than you do! 

 

 

Proselytizing

 

HOLLY:

Yes we have friends of different walks and beliefs, we don't hound them and they don't hound us, well some times they do.

 

BRUCE:

Well, Holly, remember that it was you who wrote to me!  My writings have come as a result of the proselytizing that has been directed at me over the years by so-called "humble Christians" who have adorned themselves the "God-given right" to proselytize the gospel to anyone and everyone irrespective to the harm that they inflict in the process--got to save those souls!

 

But if you are of the variety that just believes as you will and does not try to convert people to your "true religion" (since theirs is false, of course...), then you and I have nothing to talk about, because I don't have a problem with the non-proselytizers.  But something tells me you are not being quite as honest about this as you seem to think you are. 

 

 

Even More, "Anger" and "disappointment with God"

 

HOLLY:

Your anger and disappointment with God just kept ringing through in your pages and pages of email. If your mad at Him, don't take it out on me and anyone else who loves Him.

 

BRUCE:

I think I will let me Hindu friend respond to this.

 

Surya Dyananda:

"Your anger and disappointment with Vishnu just kept ringing through in your pages and pages of email. If you['re] mad at Him, don't take it out on me and anyone else who loves Him."

 

Is any of this starting to sink in, Holly?

 

 

Only Christianity Worked for Me, so it MUST be so for everyone else too!

 

HOLLY:

I tried many walks including wicca myself and every time there was something missing, wanting. 

 

BRUCE:

Just because YOU may have found something "missing" in something you may or may not have expended effort to investigate or experience, why must it necessarily follow that another person could not have the SAME feeling about Christian dogma?  Why could not another person find solace and inspiration in some other form of religion or philosophy? 

 

Gandhi was a Hindu who happened also to find enjoyment in many aspects of the Judeo-Christian Bible, the Qur'an and other religious texts, and yet he was never so inspired by any of these as he was by the Bhagavad Gita (By the way, Holly, have you ever read the Bhagavad Gita?).  So, was Gandhi lacking something that "true Christians" possess, Holly?  Was Gandhi lacking the same thing you allege you were lacking as you grew up "hating Jesus" as a "Catholic"? 

 

Talk about hateful statements!  Do you suppose any Catholics reading such derogatory implications against them--that Catholicism is not a "true Christian" sect, and worse, many of its adherents may actually be "Jesus hate[rs]"--might be deeply offended by such words?

 

Show me the evidence that demonstrates ANY sect of Christianity to be not only the true religion, but the "true sect," to the exclusion of all other sects, religions and philosophies! 

 

 

I was Raised a Catholic, and "Hated Jesus"

 

HOLLY:

I hated Jesus, was raised catholic until I said up-yours and started reading about Budda, Zen, Darrwisim, then Wicca, I stayed with Wicca for another two years.

 

BRUCE:

One thing I notice about fundamentalists is how frequently they employ the word "hate."  Why do you suppose that is, Holly?  We aren't born with such proclivities, so do you suppose such polemical rhetoric could come about as the result of upbringing and pulpit propaganda?  Why do evangelicals assume that anyone who does not believe in Jesus must be "full of hate," or "suffering," or "angry at God"?  But I repeat myself.

 

Throughout recorded history there has never been a more prevalent catalyst to unceasing hate, intolerance, subjugation, discrimination, segregation, and wholesale genocide than the poisonous idea that there, first of all, must be a god, rather than no god; that there can be but one god--my god; that there can be but one true religion--my religion; and that those who "fail" to accept these unchallengeable truths will "suffer" the "eternal consequences."

 

Moreover, Holly, the fact that right-out-of-the-gate you misspell Buddha suggests to that your reading on Buddhism is less than extensive; a position bolstered by the fact that you list "Zen" as a separate distinction from Buddha (Zen, or Zenna, is a form of Buddhism).  You further list these--along with a misspelled Darwinism--as though they are religions, which they are not.  Buddhism is not a religion in the same sense as Judaism, Christianity and Islam are religions; rather it is a philosophy of life, and interestingly enough one that is essentially atheistic. 

 

And Darwin's theory of evolution (common descent through natural selection) is not in any sense a religious appeal to the supernatural, but a title based on massive physical evidence observed in the temporal world though all of our natural and physical sciences--the same sciences that have taken us from horse-drawn carriages to the moon in the span of about 75 years; the same sciences that can split atoms and harness nuclear energy (for good and for horror); the same sciences that have produced hundreds of cures for deadly and debilitating diseases that have plagued mankind for thousands of years; the same sciences that mapped the entire human genome and allow us to identify and counter disease processes at the genetic level; the same sciences that produced the technology that went into making your automobile, your refrigerator, your microwave oven, your television, and the computers you and I are typing on to exchange these emails!   All of these things, and countless more, appeared not through obedient prayers to some invisible man in the sky, but through the endless research and testing by real people utilizing the "scientific method."

 

That you could make such mistakes tells me that your knowledge of these issues are severely lacking--likely by choice.

 

In fact, Holly, there are a multitude of findings in science that provide simple answers about the natural world that are far more "threatening" to the Bible than Darwin's theory of evolution (note that I said "the Bible" and not "God"--there is a big difference there), but because Darwin has been a popular focus of such perceived threats to Christian dogma over the last 150 years, it remains a point of focus and hostility today--although many sects (such as Catholicism) now accept evolution as the means by which "God" developed man.  Sadly, the general public still seem to be less interested in learning what evolution actually says, and more interested in just parroting the nonsense that drips on them from the pulpits.

 

 

No Matter What, I will Continue to Believe as I do!

 

HOLLY:

But the truth is, I have seen and experienced miracles in my life so many times I could not turn away even if when it rains it pours.

 

BRUCE:

You should never say never, Holly!  In order to be intellectually honest with yourself you should at least have some measurement by which to evaluate truth from untruth.  You should have a set of circumstances that, should they occur, would in your mind be sufficient to show that you were mistaken in your views.  And the same goes for anyone, regardless of what their views may be at any given time.  I have repeatedly provided such circumstances that, should they ever occur, would not only unequivocally return me to my former Christian beliefs, but inspire me to the ministry. 

 

If you set the standard up front that no amount of evidence could ever convince you that your selective ideas about the supernatural and miracles (e.g., counting the hits but ignoring the misses) are nothing more than manifestations of things you want to be true, then please tell me how you can deny the same sort of claims to infallibility from other religious claims?  For example, by what evidence could you deny a Muslim proclaiming events like the overwhelming (i.e., devastating) success of the terrorists on 9/11; and the space shuttle disintegrating over "Palestine, Texas"; and the massive world-wide protests against American imperialism and the Bush administration's warmongering, are anything less than "proof" that "the divine works of the one true God, Allah, are at work against the 'Great Satan'"? 

 

Do you see the problem, Holly? 

 

HOLLY:

God said the rain would fall on the good and the bad the choosen as you say and the not choosen.  My husband had it even worse then me, I will have him read my eamil to you and then your email back to me. He might have a few words for thought.

 

Holly

 

BRUCE:

With any luck he will help you to slow down and present your thoughts in a coherent manner before pushing the "send" button.

 

Cheers,

 

Bruce Monson

www.freethoughtfirefighters.org

Adherence to Life BEFORE Death